100 Year Starship Symposium Kicks Off to Ponder Interstellar Travel

Below:

Next story in Space

HOUSTON — Celebrities, scientists, artists and astronauts are
converging here today (Sept. 13) to discuss what it will take to
send a spaceship to another star.

The second annual
100 Year Starship Symposium is kicking off, under the
auspices of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA), to ponder the technology, psychology, sociology, and
economics of interstellar spaceflight.

Notable attendees include actors Nichelle Nichols and LeVar
Burton, who appeared on television's "Star Trek" and "Star Trek:
The Next Generation," respectively; space journalist Miles
O'Brien; alien-hunting astronomer Jill Tarter, a co-founder of
the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute;
and Johnnetta Cole, director of the Smithsonian National Museum
of African Art. Former President
Bill Clinton is backing the conference as its honorary chair,
and the symposium chair is former astronaut Mae Jemison, the
first African American woman to travel to space.

The meeting will run from Sept. 13 through 16, and will feature
scientific presentations on the propulsion and other technologies
that might be needed to send a probe to another star, as well as
discussions of the social ramifications of becoming an
interstellar civilization, and the biological consequences for
humans traveling on multi-generation starships.

A special event will explore how art and fiction push the
boundaries of science, while another will honor the 50 years of
human spaceflight activities based out of NASA's Johnson Space
Center here, and the anniversary of President John. F. Kennedy's
speech charging the nation to send men to the moon.

The conference is being held at the Hyatt Regency Houston, and is
open to the public.